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Final exercise - Reflection

Throughout this course, my perception on prototyping has been changing rapidly. I thought that prototypes are either physical or virtual. However, it is apparent that prototypes can be a combination of the two. The best example is makey makey. The user interaction is physical and the user interface may be virtual (game or Unity, etc). I was right about you can use anything to make a prototype, even a piece of paper would be suitable. In the beginning, I thought that you only make prototypes at the beginning of a project, but it has become clear that you can prototype at every stage of the project, to ensure that something works the way you want or looks the way you want. What prototyping means to me in my degree is seeing things from a different perspective and testing it. There are many instances where I needed to look outside the box to make an appropriate prototype and test it, such as the dark horse prototype. Prototyping is useful as it allows you to verify things through testing.
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Course Reflections

Throughout this course, I have learnt many things such as how to use makeymakey and unity. Overall, it was a very fun and hands on course that taught me many things. Using the makeymakey was the most enjoyable aspect for me as it gave me the freedom to make whatever I wanted, provided it met the guidelines. This course also helps with creative thinking and design due to the restrictions such as having a novel form of interaction.
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Interactive Prototype III thoughts

As this was the third and final interactive prototype, I think that it served its purpose quite well. My goal was to find potential methods of interacting and to test my usability if the user had no hands. The methods that the testers chose were of their own as I did not give them instructions on how to interact with the device, only the restriction which was you can't use your hands. I think that it served its purpose as it showed me interesting ways of interacting as well as help test my own chosen method of interaction. The dark horse prototype was overall the funnest to test as it was more based off the user's imagination.
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Interactive Prototype III user testing

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In this user testing session, it was very interesting to see how people interacted with my prototype. I decided to conduct my testing with a different method. First I told the testers about my dark horse prototype. I then told them to show me how they would interact with the prototype without me giving them any instructions. The device would be tied onto a body part of their own choosing and then they would attempt to interact with it. After giving them some time to interact with it, I would then give them a method of interacting (tying device on leg and interacting with elbow) if they didn't already attempt it themselves. It was interesting to see that most testers opted to tie it onto their leg and interact with a flexible body part such as the wrist or elbow. The only restriction was no HANDS. However, another flaw was pointed out by a tester - the only reason they tied it onto their leg was because they were sitting down. If they were standing up, maybe the users would tie it
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Interactive Prototype III

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For the third and final prototype, I decided to go with a dark horse prototype. In prototype 2, I tested the functionality and usability of my concept by putting it onto a glove. However, using the glove required the user to have hands, so what if the user had no hands ? So for this prototype, I decided to find a method of interaction that didn't require the user to have hands. I came up with a larger housing for the buttons that was attached to a band/ribbon which can be tied onto the user. The user can then interact with the buttons without using their hands and instead using other body parts such as elbow, head, chin etc.
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Interactive Prototype II Testing Session

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In the user testing session, I think that it was successful. The testers commented that it was relatively easy to use and didn't require much effort. However, there were some problems that arose such as differing size hands. I didn't consider that people would have different sized hands and palms and as a result, the buttons were harder to reach for other people. This will be taken into consideration for the future. Another thing was that it was a bit clunky as the buttons and the platform was big. Although there were several problems, in the end most testers found that it was relatively easy to use, which fulfilled my goal of testing user interaction and usability of the device (glove)
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Final version of interactive prototype II

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The final version of interactive prototype II was a glove with the buttons attached on it. To keep it simple, I decided to only put 5 buttons in total; power on, volume up, volume down, pause and play. At this point, I changed my goal from testing button functionality to testing usability and interaction. I wanted to know how easy it was to use my device and did it work for my target users - lazy people. The device worked by having the buttons in the palm of the hand and the user flexes and presses the buttons to use it.
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